1) Should we spend more time on academic articles like this? I am slave to reader preferences.

2) Remember when I made fun of the New York Times for claiming — or, rather, stupidly buying the spin of current Williams administrators — that, in 2015, Williams had “recently been making an effort to become more” economically diverse? That was garbage because, for decades, the people who run Williams have been concerned about economic diversity, probably going all the way back to Tyler Dennett. This article is a great example of that. Cappy and Gordon were concerned about economic diversity and wanted to ensure that Williams was not pricing out poor students. (And since Cappy was Provost around this time (and Gordon was a former Provost?), they were well positioned to both understand the topic and do something about it.)

I am curious where do you see this tuition train ending up. I don’t see it as sustainable to have +100k$ cost of attendance p.y. coupled with non bankruptcy dischargeable loans. Something like that would give rise to low cost online stem degree programs ( to some extent already happening w Georgia tech)

As a positive suggestion for additional posts of All Things Eph, I suggest that with your closeness to campus, you add an every-so-often column on faculty members with life extensions beyond their fields.

The further more intimate realization of Williams’ remarkable faculty would be interesting reading.

“What’s the correlation between tuition and the number of administrators?”
Obviously high, but then again, I doubt that this is news to anyone here. I am mostly interested as to what the ENDGAME is here. I don’t think that it is feasible for colleges to reform from within. The most likely scenario is a rise of a low cost credible alternative based on passing a series of tests/certifications, resulting in equilibrium where everyone with IQ high enough goes down that route and only remainder goes to regular high priced college (note that in this setting, it is negative signal to go to regular college). Colleges obviously resent this but Georgia Tech developements give me hope.

I suggest that with your closeness to campus, you add an every-so-often column on faculty members with life extensions beyond their fields.

The further more intimate realization of Williams’ remarkable faculty would be interesting reading.

Seconded!

I am mostly interested as to what the ENDGAME is here.

Why is the current path not sustainable? Assuming that need-based financial aid at places like Williams keeps pace with tuition, the current path is for virtually all students at Williams to pay some graduated percentage of the sticker price. Williams /Harvard/Yale/etc are not moving towards being less affordable, but towards a system in which every student effectively pays a different price reflecting his or her specific financial circumstances. The wealthiest individuals will pay a lot — maybe eventually $100k/year in tuition — but my gut sense is that ultra-wealthy families (like the Trumps) are generally pretty happy to pay a lot for a premium product. And there will not be much room for disruption for low-income or middle-class families–as the effective tuition rate for these families will be low. The biggest question as this trend continues is how good of a job places like Williams do in increasing the reach of financial aid. If Williams and its peers fail to expand their financial aid programs further into the middle class to keep pace with tuition/expenses creep, that will create opportunities for disruptive affordable alternatives like Georgia Tech’s.

don’t see it as sustainable to have +100k$ cost of attendance p.y. coupled with non bankruptcy dischargeable loans.

You may not realize how cheap college still is to the very rich clientele of posh schools like Williams and Midd. They can endure quite a bit more pain. Poor students (according to Williams, that’s families with income below $85K) can have financial aid. Upper middle class can go to state school.

it is not sustainable since need based tuition with sticker price of $150k p y is effectively a 100% tax on most families’ assets when their kids go to school. When this happens, even UMC families will rather have their kids go do a grad certificate in programming than go to study at oberlin/williams. Elite colleges are elite since smart kids go there; if smart kids start defecting to grad certificate programs they will not be elite anymore.

2 kids at 150k p y is 2x4x 150= $1.2mm
How many families with 2 kids have $ 1.2mm in cash/assets on hand to blow?

Yea, that's why it's important that financial aid at places like Williams keeps up with tuition increases. I agree that Williams tuition shouldn’t be a financial strain on any family. That eventually should probably mean that Williams should be subsidized for some UMC or even wealthy families. My point is: assuming financial aid keeps pace with financial need, why is it a problem if the price of Williams to families who can truly afford it (like the Trumps) keeps increasing?

If you think the upward trend on tuition is sustainable, I’m guessing you are childless, poor, or rich – or at least have never had to write a retail-level tuition check. For those like myself with 2 kids in NE liberal arts colleges- and I’m neither rich nor poor- we are paying full boat. Considering tuition is after taxes, this is absolutely killing me financially. I can’t save for retirement or pay down my mortgage, and I’m questioning the wisdom of this daily. As KSM said above – the UMC kids can go to state school- which is probably what I should have had both my kids do. With their generous merit aid and creation of “honors curricula”, they are going to capture a lot of great students who are neither rich or poor enough to go to a school like Williams.

The whole industry needs to reform. The value of these degrees is beginning to be questioned, as well they should. At second tier schools, merit money is given to kids like mine in order to raise the academic bar on admits. This makes sense. At the end of the day, does it really matter if you went to Williams or say Bucknell? I’ve been a working professional for decades and it has been a long time since anyone asked where I went to college. And when I lived in the Midwest, most people had never heard of Williams. Something has got to change. We could start with the 5 star hotel like living conditions and sushi in the dining halls. Not to mention administrative and real estate bloat.

Considering tuition is after taxes, this is absolutely killing me financially.

This is an excellent point, but it applies to these colleges’ respective financial aid policies rather than their sticker price. It sounds, from your experience, that your kids’ LACs are not providing sufficient discounts for you — and that their attending these colleges is therefore not truly affordable. That’s a real problem! But that’s a different problem that is not directly related to the question here — which is whether colleges can and should continue to raise their sticker prices?

My question is: wouldn’t you want your kids’ colleges to raise their sticker price by $20k/year if that resulted in you getting an additional $30k/year in financial aid? The cost that matters is the cost of attendance — not the sticker price. To the extent that schools are using sticker price increases to fund additional financial aid to low-income (and increasingly middle-class) families, that strikes me as a good thing.

Incidentally, I think everyone on this blog would agree that there’s a fair amount of bloat in all of these budgets (especially with respect to administrators and certain luxury amenities).